China’s Jiangxi TV seeks ties with PH, other ASEAN channels

JIANGXI – Jiangxi TV, one of the top 10 urban television channels in China, has expressed intention to expand cooperation with counterparts in the Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines.

Li Jianguo, deputy director of Jiangxi TV, said cooperation with ASEAN countries is necessary under the Belt and Road Initiative, a major economic integration initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

He said Jiangxi TV has existing cooperation with some Asian countries like Japan and South Korea in making documentaries and films.

“So far, we are making progress in co-production of documentaries but of course, we hope to expand such cooperation because ASEAN countries are participants of Belt and Road Initiative,” Li said in a recent interview with foreign journalists.

“We hope to expand cooperation in entertainment program, documentaries and reality shows to represent the similarities and differences. These are something that we are interested,” he added.

Li said many companies and enterprises in Jiangxi have businesses in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in June 2016, the relations between China and the Philippines made tremendous progress particularity in the field of trades and investment and people-to-people exchanges.

With this, the Philippine government is hoping to increase the Chinese tourist arrivals from more than 600,000 in 2016 to one million this year.

“Many tourists of both Jiangxi and the Philippines are visiting each other,” Li said.

He said more than 100,000 tourists from Asian countries particularly from Japan and South Korea come to Jiangxi every year.

Li said Jiangxi TV is the largest media company in the province with annual revenue of USD700 million.
“Very soon we will have new site in the new area with an area of 100 hectares and last year our station received 20 different awards,” he said.

Li said Jiangxi has many good things and beautiful places to offer for the television viewers in Asian countries particularly from the Southeast Asia.

Jiangxi province is situated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River with land area of 1.67 million square kilometers and population of nearly 40 million.

The Gan River dominates the province, flowing through the entire length of the province from south to north and enters Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake of China.

“We have series of documentaries about Poyang Lake which is the sanctuary of the migrating Siberian cranes and white dolphins,” Li said.

Jiangxi is also popular for its forest-covered mountains including Jinggangshan or Jianggan mountain, a cradle of the Chinese revolution and the cornerstone of the People’s Republic of China.

Jinggangshan is now a city with 48 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) coming from red tourism which brought one million tourists to its more than 100 historic revolutionary relics and sites in 2016.